At Ipswich, on Tuesday, Mr. Balfour delivered a very weighty
speech in answer to the Southport address of Mr. Gladstone. He examined the marvellous assertion that the Crimes Act bad been directed against combinations legal in England, and showed what it had really done. In Kerry, for instance, the Crimes Act had brought to justice the criminals concerned in four separate murders and six separate murder- ous attacks, criminals who could not have been brought to justice without the Crimes Act ; and the result has been that Kerry now shows the most marvellous improvement in its social condition. Mr. Balfour also showed how utterly untrue it is that combinations are put down in Ireland which would be perfectly lawful in England, and he remarked rather happily on Mr. Gladstone's curious epithet for the "Plan of Campaign" that it is "extra-legal," which is only Mr. Gladstone's way of saying that it is illegal, but that he does not want to say so. He tested Mr. Glad- stone's assertion that the passing of the Bill proposed by Mr. Parnell in 1886 would have prevented the necessity for the "Plan of Campaign" by the cases of the Ponsonby and Olphert estates, on neither of which would it have reduced the rents or arrears nearly so much as the landlords themselves had offered to reduce them. And he declared it to be a gross insult to English working men to say that they would have anything to do with such combinations as the "Plan of Campaign." He showed how untrue it is that the priesthood in Ireland have in general held back the people from transgressions of the law, though, of course, there are distinguished exceptions ; and he concluded a very masterly speech by pointing out how impossible it is to cure suddenly of sympathy with crime, a population that have grown up under the influence of the National League. No speaker of the day is so cogent in his arrays of fact as Mr. Balfour.
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